Various prior art cigarette lighters incorporating safety features are known. Safety features are generally provided to reduce the risk of injury to an operator or bystanders. Safety features for cigarette lighters can be divided into several general categories. Some safety mechanisms prevent ignition of a fuel source unless the lighter is properly oriented. Other mechanisms have been designed to automatically turn off a fuel supply valve. More recently, attention has been directed toward preventing ignition of the lighters by children and other persons normally not able to appreciate the danger of fire. Individuals usually considered in these efforts are young children, age five years and younger.
Child tamper-resistant mechanisms have focused on preventing depression of the thumb pad or thumb actuator found in most lighters by incorporating a locking mechanism that physically blocks the downward movement of the thumb pad unless a safety latch or other button is first engaged to unlock the lighter. However, none of the prior inventions have incorporated a device which allows deflection of the operating button but not the gas release lever. The invention presented here, incorporates a safety button which must be moved to an engaged position and held there during displacement of the operating button. The operating button may be displaced whether the safety button is engaged or not, but the lighter will only release combustible fuel when the safety button is engaged during displacement of the operating button.
This additional step in the normal operation of a piezo-electric lighter will reduce the possibility of use by children. Children may not comprehend the need to move the safety button to its engaged position an maintain this position during depression of the operating button. As such, it is likely that a child will at best depress the operating button without the safety button in an engaged position, with will in turn, not deflect the release lever. Even if a child understands the operation of the child-resistant button device, he/she may not have the strength or manual dexterity to operate the safety button while depressing the operating button.